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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   26033 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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While the Sweeney jeans add is clearly an overreaction to fake eugenics downthread, it does seem like real, hard, embryo selection eugenics is here, or at least right around the corner. Scott Alexander's article released yesterday, Suddenly, Trait-Based Embryo Selection, says:

In 2023, Orchid Health entered the field. Unlike Genomic Prediction, which tested only the most important genetic variants, Orchid offers whole genome sequencing, which can detect the de novo3 mutations involved in autism, developmental disorders, and certain other genetic diseases.

Critics accused GP and Orchid of offering “designer babies”, but this was only true in the weakest sense - customers couldn’t “design” a baby for anything other than slightly lower risk of genetic disease. These companies refused to offer selection on “traits” - the industry term for the really controversial stuff like height, IQ, or eye color. Still, these were trivial extensions of their technology, and everybody knew it was just a matter of time before someone took the plunge.

Last month, a startup called Nucleus took the plunge. They had previously offered 23andMe style genetic tests for adults. Now they announced a partnership with Genomic Prediction focusing on embryos. Although GP would continue to only test for health outcomes, you could forward the raw data from GP to Nucleus, and Nucleus would predict extra traits, including height, BMI, eye color, hair color, ADHD, IQ, and even handedness.

The gist of the article is that while the science is still in its infancy and there are a lot of challenges to overcome, these companies are not just selling vaporware. There's real embryo selection based on traits happening, that is going to be significant for babies being born now.

Of course this article is just another confirmation of science fiction becoming reality, but it's still shocking to see from my perspective. You'd think we would at least have a discussion as to whether this should be legal or not, but unfortunately given how crippled out legislative apparatus is, tech companies continue to just push ahead with zero fear of regulatory change. They're willing to take the risk.

Now I personally have religious reasons to oppose this sort of intervention, but even if you don't, it's not hard to imagine the insane societal consequences of allowing free for all designer babies. As one hyperbolic comment on the slate star subreddit says:

Yet another reason for people to not have kids.

This shit is so socially erosive. "Want a baby? Do you want a prole baby, made the old fashioned way? You don't know what you're going to get! It's like a loot box, could be pure crap. You should PAY US to make a cool designer baby, with a 34% increased chance of the ultra-rare and coveted phenotype High Functioning Autist. If you have a loot box baby, they're going to get crushed by Ultra-Rare HFA Baby"

Nuke it from orbit.

While this comment is pretty over the top, I still think there's a strong point here! Gattaca was a cautionary tale, not a user's manual. Then again, I suppose the general zeitgeist considers the prole class to be so whipped, and coddled with bread and circuses, that our materialistic transhumanist tech overlords can simply do whatever they want, even if it will end up condemning "natural-born" people to permanent servitude.

The culture war lines here would've been pretty clear a while ago, but now it's muddled. Will the religious right be able to turn their coalition against this? Will the left see this as inequality on steroids? Will an uneasy alliance be made to ban this technology from the light of day? Only time will tell.

Upper claaaes becoming a monoculture makes the revolution so much easier.

Insofar as they're able to maintain cohesion and will to power, the opposite is true.

Revolutions happen when elevated factions with higher internal cohesion than the ruling elite figure they'd be better off without their supposed betters. Unity of purpose in the ruling elite makes these conditions less likely to happen.

Nicolae Ceaușescu would dispute this. So would Stalin, for that matter; unless we're going to reduce the claim to a tautology, that the fact that all movements have leaders makes those leaders by definition "elevated factions" renders the possibility of an "uprising of the masses" defnitionally impossible.

The elite do not enforce their will by their own hand; that is done by the security state, whose ranks are filled from the very masses whose necks they are stepping on, and who stay loyal so long as they have faith that backing the elite is a better deal than the alternative. No amount of in-group cohesion will save the ruling elite if and when they decide "hey, why do we need all these lessers around," or elite incompetence erodes the secuirty apparatus' faith in the elite.

the fact that all movements have leaders makes those leaders by definition "elevated factions" renders the possibility of an "uprising of the masses" defnitionally impossible

This is correct. Masses are categorically incapable of mounting any deliberate action. All they can muster is panic and senseless violence. Any direction is given by leadership, which is incompatible with being a mass.

The elite do not enforce their will by their own hand; that is done by the security state, whose ranks are filled from the very masses whose necks they are stepping on

The necks of the baton wielders are not stepped on, or at least not enough as to make them ineffective. When that happens, they tend to turn the batons against their commanders in military coups, and become new elites; or break ranks and fail to defend their commanders against competitors.

No amount of in-group cohesion will save the ruling elite if [...] incompetence erodes the security apparatus' faith in the elite.

What you are describing is quite exactly the higher level of in-group cohesion of a counter-elite producing a circulation.

A gang of colonels decides they trust each other more than their commanders, and performs a military coup. A common story.

But a more common if less dramatic story is that the colonel is the friend of the general is the friend of the politician and that they all have more to lose by breaking ranks, so they all agree to preserve the system and keep their mouths shut.

Genetically engineered viruses don't give a fuck about internal cohesion of a part of the social strata.

If we're just going to make up fictitious weapons, I don't see why we can't make up fictitious countermeasures as well.

Warfare however does give a fuck about internal cohesion. Anybody that's ever done it will tell you that. And that holds even when it's making-FOXDIE tier biomedical spycraft.

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